Bonn/Berlin 14.01.2021 Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) announced today that he wants to provide households with poor internet connections with a voucher for a satellite connection. A voucher program is to be launched to enable households with very poor internet coverage to use satellite capacity in the short term. Areas in which speeds of less than ten megabits per second are available and where no expansion is planned are to benefit from this. In this way, around 200,000 households across Germany could be provided with fast internet, enabling them to “participate digitally” during the coronavirus crisis. Specifically, households are to receive a voucher of 500 euros each. This amount is roughly equivalent to the cost of purchasing and installing a satellite connection. The German Broadband Association (BREKO) explains:
BREKO supports the Federal Ministry of Transport’s approach of enabling particularly remote and poorly supplied households to participate digitally via a voucher program. “Due to limited civil engineering and planning capacities as well as lengthy approval procedures, we need alternative solutions for households and areas that are particularly difficult to access. The proposed vouchers are a good solution for providing people in these areas with high-speed Internet access on a transitional basis, despite the available financial resources, in areas where private-sector and subsidized fiber-optic expansion, which is the most future-proof and sustainable solution without ifs and buts, has reached its natural limits. Explains BREKO Managing Director Dr. Stephan Albers.”
Some time ago, BREKO presented the German government with a concept for unbureaucratic demand stimulation in the form of a “fiber optic premium”, which has not yet been taken up by the government but would still be important. The idea behind it: A fiber optic premium is intended to stimulate demand for future-proof fiber optic connections in areas that do not reach the threshold of profitability because not enough households opt for a fiber optic connection. The BREKO proposal provides for a connection premium (EUR 500) for laying the fiber optic cable from the sidewalk to the building, a contract premium (EUR 500) for concluding an Internet access contract and an in-house premium (EUR 150), which can be combined to cover part of the costs incurred.
The state government in Baden-Württemberg is currently working on a pilot project that takes up key proposals of this concept and which BREKO expressly supports. In view of the ongoing legislative process to revise the Telecommunications Act (Telecommunications Modernization Act – TKMoG), it is now up to the Bundestag and Bundesrat to give clear priority to self-sufficient and subsidized expansion measures for fast Internet over the impractical universal service in order to provide citizens with fast Internet as quickly as possible. The implementation planned to date is in breach of EU regulations, which regard universal service and thus also the right to fast Internet as a last resort (“ultima ratio”) if all other available instruments do not lead to success. This also includes measures such as the voucher solution announced today for households with particularly poor coverage.”